Community Corner
Patch Picks: Local Green Homes and Businesses
Local homes and buildings feature green design that save energy and water. See how folks are taking greening their homes and offices to another level.
Consider features that reduce energy needs and costs in your home: daylighting, lightshelves, and better insulation, for example. The following local professional and residential buildings and companies offer tours, or are open to visitors year-round, and exhibit these features and many more. Some of them are remarkable.
The home of Jackson Madnick in Wayland
Features: Creator of Pearl's Premium Ultra-Low Maintenance Grass, Jackson Madnick has been adding features to his home for over a decade - he now uses no electricity to heat his house in the winter yet on a January day it is a toasty 72 degrees. Almost all of the features have been installed by Madnick himself, including insulation in the walls from recycled fibers such as bluejeans, a heliostat on the roof which melts snow in key spots of the yard (including his wife's windshield), solar heating, thermal mass, daylighting, and much more. The list is long and impressive.
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Tours are available on Saturdays and must be scheduled in advance. Email Madnick here.
Find out what's happening in Westonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Features: An antique horse barn built in 1911 was renovated in 1983 using a combination of passive and active sustainable building features including sophisticated composting toilets, light shelves, passive solar heating, super-insulation of the walls and ceiling, natural ventilation, and solar PV panels.
How to see it: The Mass Audubon sanctuary has an installation that describes its green features, how they work and what their purposes are, for all visitors year-round. Or check out this video.
Urban Ark, Home of Elva and David Del Porto in Newton
Features: Green house living (using an adjoining greenhouse to increase indoor air quality, provide space heating, wastewater treatment and wash water gardens), solar heating, and energy and water use reduction.
How to see it: Information about tours (next ones in October) available online. Extensive information about the home, its features and the home owners, well-known in the world of sustainable design, also available online.
Ecological Engineering in Weston
Features: Wastewater gardens, zero water-waste and water reuse to name a few. This unique company creates landscaping and greenhouse solutions to problems involving water treatment and conservation. The company installed a solar aquatics systems in the town center of Weston, a system that "grows wastewater away" and replaced an out-of-date wastewater system with what became an amenity — a garden.
How to visit: Call the company at 978-369-9440 for more information about local projects.
The Home of Andrei Ursache and Amy Riddle in Maynard
Features: Integrated design, air source heat pump, daylighting, grid tied PV panels, heat recovery ventilation, passive solar heating, super-insulated walls and roof and more.
How to visit: This home is one of the many homes on the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) website that will be giving an open house on Oct. 1. Many homes offer tours at other times of the year as well. More houses will be added to the list over the summer.
